


Pining

by Miri1984



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Grief, M/M, Pining, Unrequited Crush, oh man lots of pining, the spiral getting into everyone's business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 14:24:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18875005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: Timothy Stoker has always had a type.





	Pining

He always had a thing for the goofy ones. Not necessarily the ones who didn’t know they were good looking (Tim can find something attractive about practically anyone, and doesn’t really understand how a person, such an amazing combination of experience and physicality, can ever be considered ugly) but the ones who don’t know how to deal with it, the ones who don’t think they deserve to be looked at.

He’s careful about it. He knows he’s good looking, and he knows how to use it (Danny knew how to use it better, Danny could charm a roomful of people with a few words, Danny had liked an audience and Danny had died without one) but he also knows how to be unthreatening. There’s a reason he’s single (well, technically) because physical contact is something he loves and craves but emotional contact comes with a bit more baggage. It’s a thin line from “I love you” to people asking questions about your life and having to answer one of them with “I investigate the paranormal for a living because my brother was skinned by clowns” can put a dampner on things.

Martin is one of the goofy ones. Tim supposes a lot of people would find him ordinary looking, but that’s mostly because he avoids eye contact, walks stooped over as though he’s afraid someone will attack him for existing. It’s easy to overlook the soft curls of his hair, the line of his jaw, the full lips, when he’s stammering an apology for  _ being.  _

Tim knows that look, and he wonders if Martin has a reason for being here not too dissimilar to his own. Life has hurt Martin, but he’s fighting against it, and Tim knows it’s a losing fight and he thinks that Martin does as well, but… he still fights.

There is a lot to admire about that.

It helps that Martin laughs at his jokes, of course. It helps that Martin brings him cups of tea and asks him how he’s doing like a doting parent (because he can’t go back to his parents any more, that sad, broken house where his mother stares into the distance and his father tries to pretend that everything is normal and neither of them know how much worse it would be if they knew the truth of what had happened).

Martin is adorable, really.

“You should ask him out,” Sasha tells him, over lunch one day. She’s just transferred from artifact storage and he knows she’s relieved to be out of there. He can understand why.  There is some seriously creepy stuff in there.

“You wouldn’t be jealous?” Tim says.

She laughs. “We only dated for a month, Tim.”

“It was a hot month, though, right?”

She mock punches him in the arm.

“I dunno if it would be a good idea. Work relationships always end badly.” She punches him again.

It doesn’t hurt.

He doesn’t ask Martin out, though, because they get moved down to the Archives. Jon comes to see him the day after they find out Gertrude is no longer head Archivist. Only to be expected, really, she must have been over seventy. Still, odd that she hadn’t apparently told anyone she was leaving.

“Elias has offered me the Archivist job,” Jon says, and there should be a hint of an apology in there, since Jon is the most recent employee, not that any of them are trained Archivists. 

“Really?” Tim says, and then realises how skeptical he sounds when Jon frowns. “They’re not going to advertise?”  _ for someone actually qualified,  _ he doesn’t add. Because he’s not an idiot.

Jon shrugs. “I suppose he wanted to keep it in house. He’s also said I can take some assistants. He recommended Martin, God knows why, but I’m allowed two more.”

Tim purses his lips. The archives are were all the older statements are kept. If he has access to those he might be able to…

“It’s a pay raise,” Jon says. “Not a significant one but…”

“I’m in,” Tim says. 

Jon flashes him one of his tight smiles. The man really does have a stick up his ass, but Tim can find it in himself to be flattered.

They set up their desks in the assistant’s space. Tim chooses the one furthest from Jon’s door and rifles through the drawers, finding nothing in them aside from a strange fractal painting that makes his head spin in the bottom filing cabinet. He tosses it and starts setting himself up, a picture of his parents and Danny, his good ergonomic mouse mat. 

Martin has the desk closest and Sasha is between them, with her spider plant and her gigantic water bottle (got to keep hydrated, Tim!). It feels… cosy at first. Before all the weirdness starts.

Maybe it’s just because there are fewer people to focus on, down here, that Tim starts to notice it. The way that Martin sidles into Jon’s office with a cup of tea, brewed to perfection the way he knows Jon likes it. The way he is quick to jump into any conversation about Jon and whether they think he’s doing a better job than Gertrude. The way Martin’s eyes slip away from a conversation if Jon is in the background.

Tim doesn’t have anything against Jon, not really, or at least he didn’t when he accepted the archives job (why precisely they had to move an entire team down here from research doesn’t quite sit well with him but he supposes Jon should be allowed to choose his own team… not that he can remember Gertrude ever having anyone but her slightly scary self) but he now finds himself frowning whenever he sees the other man.

He snaps at Jon, over a report he gives to Martin about a follow up on a statement. Martin had almost been crying, reading it (Jon hadn’t even had the decency to give it to him face to face) and Tim had felt a surge of protectiveness so strong he’d been barging into Jon’s office before he could stop himself.

Jon is reading one of the statements, one of the ones that has to go on the old tape recorders, something about fire and Tim doesn’t care.

“You know management isn’t just about shouting at your employees, don’t you?” he says.

Jon tosses hair out of his eyes and raises an eyebrow. “Tim. I’m busy.”

“You… you should be nicer to Martin,” he blurts. “He’s just doing his job.”

“Something you’re not doing right now, I see,” Jon says, and Tim has to resist the urge to punch him in the face. “Whereas I am trying to.” He waves at the tape recorder, then looks at Tim, and Tim walks out even more pissed off than before.

He invites Martin out for a drink. Martin assumes it’s a work thing and Tim doesn’t have the heart to disabuse him of that notion, not when he has to “just check in with Jon first, maybe he’ll want to come too?”. Tim knows now that his little infatuation isn’t going to go anywhere. Martin is single minded and devoted and everything that’s going to make him seriously unhappy in the long term but hey, Tim can at least try to cheer him up a little.

They go to a pub a little further away from the Institute that Sasha and Tim have been to quite a bit, out of the range of Chelsea’s surcharge and Martin does seem a little more relaxed here, hands cupping his pint and smiling under his hair at Tim as he jokes about the wall art and the obviously flirting couple at the next table.

“Jon should come here with us,” Martin says. “He’s working too hard, trying to fix up Gertrude’s mess.”

Tim should have expected that the conversation would take this turn. “Martin seriously,” he says. “Jon’s an asshole. He’s not worth your time.”

Martin blinks. “What?”

“You’re pining. It’s not healthy.” Yep, here he is. Timothy Stoker, absolutely capable of drowning in his own irony.

“Pining?” Martin’s voice does that little upward spike that Tim finds way too adorable. “I don’t know what…”

“Oh my god, Martin,” Tim says, realising suddenly that Martin doesn’t even  _ know.  _ “Are you telling me you haven’t even noticed? I think I owe Sasha a fiver.”

“For what?”

“You’re an idiot, Martin. And you deserve better.”

After that Martin doesn’t exactly avoid Tim, but he does seem more flustered around him. Not in the same way he’s flustered around Jon though, Tim thinks bitterly, even as he throws himself more enthusiastically at his two police contacts, neither of which have any desire for something serious, both of them though, are very good with their mouths.

Tim takes his fun where he can get it, and this is a skillset that directly benefits the Archives. He really should be asking for overtime.

 

#

 

Worms attack, which is fine. Really. He’s hardly going to tell Jon and the others that it’s not the worst thing that’s happened to him. He gazes into the mirror, once the plasters have come off and he’s well enough to stand without pain, and isn’t even mad. He looks less like Danny now, and that makes things easier.

 

God he misses him.

 

#

 

He could lie to himself and say he doesn’t even know why he stays when Jon tells them to leave. It’s for Martin. He wants to show Martin exactly what kind of a person he’s infatuated with. It’s not even for Tim’s sake, honestly. It’s been months since he’s seen anyone in that capacity, the worms burrowed into him and invaded him and spread through him and he is never entirely certain, any more, if he is alone, and he knows he could never live with himself if he somehow infected someone else with them. No. Not with them. With the institute itself. They are trapped here and he isn’t going to let anyone else get dragged in.

 

They go through a door and…

 

They go through a door that isn’t there into a place that shouldn’t exist and they’re together and Tim cannot trust his eyes or his feelings or his memories and they just have to walk, don’t they? They just have to keep moving and not lose control of their limbs or their minds or forget how to breathe.

 

_ “I could kill you, but you’re so sweet, wondering my corridors like a pair of lost lovers, each of you wishing for something you can never have. What if I could give it to you? To both of you?” _

 

They go through a door and…

 

_ Tim tangles his fingers in Martin’s hair and kisses him against a wall that has no mirrors but somehow reflects everything that he has ever felt. Danny shakes his head. Worms crawl out of Martin’s empty eye sockets. _

 

No.

 

Tim’s hand laces with Martin’s as they walk the corridors. Martin is so desperate to get back but Tim starts to wonder if maybe they are better off here, together. Martin looks at him, worry and hurt and longing in his eyes. “Jon? Did you come through the door as well?” 

“Jon isn’t here,” Tim says, but he knows Martin doesn’t understand.

“Jon?”

 

Soft, wrong laughter echoes around them.

 

They go through a door and…

 

#

 

There is more blood than Tim would have expected.

 

#

 

Of course it would be Martin that makes him talk about Danny. Of course Martin could get him to talk, with that soft, gentle, insistent questioning that is far more effective than Jon’s gruff demands or Elias’... everything.

If it isn’t for the fact that Martin is absolutely going to turn around and give the tape to Jon Tim can even pretend that Martin genuinely cares about what happened. 

That’s not fair.

Or perhaps it is. Danny’s life was, in the end, meaningless, and his death was no different to the hundreds of eldritch and horrible deaths they’ve had to bear witness to for the last two years. Danny’s death is just another blip in the radar.

It feels… not good, but cathartic, to tell Martin about what happened. When he’s done, Martin even leans forward and squeezes Tim’s hand. There would have been a time when he would have taken advantage of that. Turned his hand around and curled his fingers over Martin’s. Traced a pattern on the smooth, warm skin. Tilted his head and given Martin the trademark Stoker smile.

Maybe it would even work, this time, with Martin already vulnerable and softened by Tim’s pain.

But he just lets his hand lie there as Martin gathers the tape to take to Jon. 

 

#

 

They don’t try to show him Martin. Seeing Danny’s face is bad enough but they don’t have Martin’s skin, so they can’t taunt him with that, at least. Small mercies in the horror of the Unknowing. 

Martin is whole and safe, back at the Institute, and that will have to be enough.

  
  



End file.
